Basu: District schooled by students over double standard

Sep. 21, 2013

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The Atlantic school district in southwestern Iowa frequently warns students of the dangers of inappropriate social media use, like cyberbullying, sexting or tweeting sexually explicit images. Students have been suspended, both in and out of school, for cyber offenses. Police have even been brought in to investigate.

So when a picture of a hand on a breast was tweeted from a middle school teacher’s Twitter account on Aug. 16, students who “follow” the teacher were shocked. Everyone waited for the school district to address it. And waited and waited.

Yet while the community was buzzing about it, and screen shots of the image were being retweeted, not a word was said by the administration. “It’s almost as if there was not a situation,” said Lillie Zablocki, 17, one of three senior student editors on the high school newspaper, the Needle. So, in a gutsy, well-reasoned Sept. 10 editorial, living up to the newspaper’s name, the three called the school district out for its double standard. “By not publicly addressing the situation,” it said, “the administration sends a message to the community that the standards taught to the students are not truly valued by the district.”

Writers Meghan Plambeck, Sierra Smith and Zablocki interviewed Superintendent Michael Armstein, who told them the school was treating the incident as if eighth grade language arts teacher Marnie Lieferman’s Twitter account were “compromised.” I hear that and my first thought is of Anthony Weiner, who may forever have discredited the notion of an account being hacked after controversy over sexual images erupts.

The editors didn’t take the explanation at face value. They argued the district should track the online trail of the image to find out who hacked it and how. They also questioned why police were not contacted; only the school district attorney was.

I asked Armstein how they had determined Lieferman’s account was hacked. He said, without specifying, “based on the information that she could provide, what she had done and when she was notified.” He hinted that disciplinary action was taken against the teacher, but said that information is confidential.

But why punish her if they truly believe her personal account was hacked? “Based on the impact on the school and the school district,” said Armstein “to ensure that no further instances occur.” That would be a new standard, punishing someone for how a community was affected by something she didn’t do.

And what if she had intentionally tweeted the image? He said that could lead anywhere from a reprimand to termination.

Asked if it isn’t a double standard for students to be punished so harshly but not teachers, Armstein said he didn’t think so because there was no information that the tweet from the teacher’s account was sent during school hours. If students make inappropriate tweets during the school day, they are punished, up to and including expulsion. He also said the district’s Internet use policy covers only school accounts, and this came from the teacher’s personal Twitter account. But as Plambeck noted, a teacher is so much in the public eye that it hardly makes a difference whether it’s a work or personal account with a tweet like that.

The point here isn’t to vilify a teacher for what may have been a stupid mistake. Smith, 17, had Lieferman as a teacher and said she was one of her favorites. The newspaper editors said they didn’t want to harm her by writing their piece. But Smith said, “Teachers are public figures. They’re held to a higher standard.” Especially when their students follow their Twitter feeds.

“The school has to keep in mind every action they take is an example for the students,” said Plambeck, 17.

“We’ve been preached to with all these guidelines and standards,” said Zablocki, noting a speaker’s presentation at a high school assembly last year warning about social media use. “And I don’t know if they’re following it.”

After the editorial ran, the superintendent and the teacher released statements saying basically what Armstein told me. The district deserves credit for not blocking the editorial. But its late response, lack of a full explanation and apparent double standard have all the markings of an institution caught in an embarrassing spot, afraid of bad publicity and trying — not very convincingly — to cover its behind.

Plambeck said the incident has been joked about at school, “but there’s also a lot of disappointment in the school district.”

Fortunately these journalism students have learned well — to show appropriate skepticism and good reasoning, to stick to the point rather than point fingers and to hold their school district accountable for what it teaches in and out of class. Maybe, from the administration’s perspective, a bit too well.